Linda Baker talks about abusive relationship she says she endured

Linda Baker sat in the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe in the East Rochester Plaza Friday afternoon and reflected on how she's felt over the course of her estranged husband's murder trial.

Mostly, she said, she's tired of feeling like she was somehow the one on trial.

For Baker, 49, of New Sewickley Township, the Hot Dog Shoppe has always been the place she's gone to meet up with people. That hasn't changed since Dec. 3, 2009, when her husband, Gregory, shot and wounded her and shot and killed her new friend Thomas Dougherty.

Linda sat in a booth and thought about the past few weeks.

"I just hated that it was all about how bad I was," she said. "I understand that Greg was fighting for his life ... but he turned things around. I really felt like I was the criminal and Greg was the victim. It was just so one-sided."

Gregory Baker, 56, is awaiting a March 23 sentencing after being found guilty Tuesday of third-degree murder, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. He was acquitted on charges of first-degree murder - on which he could have faced the death penalty - and on attempted murder.

ABUSE IN THE PAST

Linda said she met her husband through a mutual friend when she was 16 and he was 23, and she said he was controlling from the beginning of their relationship.

"His plan was to get someone he could mold into what he wanted," she said. "He had no clue who I was. He only knew who he wanted me to be."

During the trial, Linda testified that she was abused during her relationship, especially during the early years, but she eventually learned how to act to keep the physical abuse at bay. Gregory denied that, as did their daughter, who testified that she never saw her father physically abuse their mother.

But court documents in 1980 and 1982 showed there were cases of physical violence.

In May 1980, while Linda was pregnant, Gregory was accused of punching her in the eye and of assaulting her mother, Sue Acree. According to the charges he choked Acree, threw her over the hood of a car and threatened to kill her. Linda refused to prosecute, and the charges stemming from her involvement were dropped.

Gregory was accepted into a county program for first-time offenders for the charges that stemmed from the assault on Acree, and he was placed on probation for a year.

In December 1982, Gregory was charged with assaulting Linda. According to court documents in that case, he punched her in the head, threatened to kill her and attempted to run her car off the road. He was released on bond and ordered to stay away from Linda and her family. But he didn't abide by the judge's order and was sent to jail.

Those charges were also dropped after Linda decided she no longer wished to prosecute.

A ROCKY RELATIONSHIP

The pair eventually married in 1988. Linda said her husband was gone most of the time for work, had frequent affairs, visited adult bookstores and was often emotionally abusive.

Linda, who was overweight before undergoing gastric bypass surgery several years ago, said her husband often made jokes about her weight, but would then say he was only kidding.

"What comes out of your mouth is in your heart," she said.

Gregory didn't deny during the trial that he had affairs and visited adult bookstores.

Linda said her husband often bought her gifts, "guilt gifts," to justify the cheating.

Gregory testified that Linda kept things from him about what was going on at home.

"I spent years trying to keep everything together," Linda said. She said she hid the everyday problems of life at home from her husband so that he could focus on his job and not worry about his family.

During the trial there was a great deal of testimony from Gregory and some other witnesses about Linda's drug abuse.

"They acted like I took drugs for 33 years," Linda said. She said she did develop a problem with prescription pills, which she struggled with for two years as a way to cope with her marital problems. She said she went to the psychiatric ward of the hospital, got help and is no longer abusing pills.

"I wasn't proud of the things I did. I never justified the things I did," Linda said. "They kept saying I was lying. But what did I lie about? I admitted to the bad things that I did. And I wasn't the one on trial."

Linda said there was much made of the fact that she went to dinner with her husband just a few weeks before the shooting, which the defense said was an indication that she wasn't really afraid of him. She said she was afraid to tell him no, and it was easier just to go with him.

Linda said she knew her husband would hurt her one day. She said while the defense portrayed her as someone who only said she was afraid because she was desperate for attention, ultimately her fears came true on the day her husband shot her.

"It happened. I wasn't making it up," she said.

Despite her husband's affairs and abuse, Linda said she never hurt him. "I never thought to shoot him, even though I had access to guns," she said.

THE SHOOTING

Linda testified during the trial about the day of the shooting and how her husband drove into the parking lot of the East Rochester Plaza, brandished a gun, shot Dougherty and then shot her. She testified about lying on the ground and pretending to be dead, out of fear that he would shoot her again.

She said the gunshot felt like a punch, and as she was lying there she was thinking, "Wow. Gunshots don't really hurt. But I bet a knife, getting stabbed would hurt." Looking back on it now, she thinks, "I might have been in shock."

Linda said she remembers someone pressing down on her wound, which she later learned was to keep her from bleeding out, but at the time she said that pressure hurt worse than the gunshot wound.

She said she also remembers being in the helicopter and feeling like it was bouncing up and down like it was going to crash. She opened up her eyes and realized she was feeling a medic performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her.

She has a scar from the bullet on her chest just below her right shoulder and another scar on her back where the bullet exited.

WHAT NOW?

Linda Baker is now living with her mother and trying to decide what direction her life will take.

She said she's struggling financially, because all marital assets are frozen, and she has large medical bills from the shooting.

"I was the victim of domestic abuse, and now I'm the victim of poverty," she said.

Linda said she's interested in working with victims of domestic abuse and trying to help other women who are struggling in abusive situations.

Kristen Doerschner can be reached online at kdoerschner@timesonline.com.

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